The Altcoin Thread

what is most profitable to mine now? Darkcoin was good for a while, but now $18 per day down from ~$40/day for me.
 
So reality check:

if the average multi-coin pool makes 0.01 BTC per mhash per day, is this anything remotely efficient compared to a cheaper btc asic?

are we just burning power using the hardware we have handy?

Ah okay, by my rough calculations, it would take about 80 Ghash/sec in pure btc asic to make the same amount.

So that would be 32 red/blue bitfury usb units, at $100 each, unless something newer/better/cheaper is out because I don't watch the btc hardware world anymore.

Or three of these $400 units = $1200 http://www.amazon.com/ASICMiner-Block-Erupter-Cube-Miner/dp/B00H8K3MZU

So we are doing pretty good, not too shabby at all.

here's another interesting one

Antminer S1 does 0.028 BTC per day - it costs 1.4 BTC, so like $1000 now

So a 2.5 mhash/sec scrypt machine does roughly the same (a little less)

I guess eventually if you can get your hands on cheap enough BTC hardware it can use a lot less power.

This won't ship until May, but if it was working now, for $400 it does more than 2.5 mhash of scrypt

http://www.blackarrowsoftware.com/store/prospero-x-1.html
 
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Well, everyone jumped on ZEIT right at 05:00UTC and then the network got stuck at block 500... it will not budge.

Fail.

oh well... that takes care of that one... back to KDC

EDIT: Looks like it forked... LOL. Imagine that.
 
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Carbon_Rod said:
?? For something that does 2.5Mhash using Scrypt, it sure doesn't say that on its page. I'd think that an effective marketing point.
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Sorry I wasn't clear. That is only a btc asic.

I was comparing it to using our own scrypt rigs vs pure btc asic to make bitcoin.

It takes 80 ghash of btc asic to produce the same as 2.5 mhash of scrypt converted to btc

So a 100ghash btc asic is faster than 2.5mhash of scrypt, if you are going for btc conversion.

This of course is based on 1 mhash = 0.01 btc per day, if conversions get worse, that's a problem.

But btc difficulty is constantly rising too, so 100 ghash may be pointless when that ships.

Look at how wildly different the far right of this graph is:

http://poolpicker.eu/

It is all about long term averages. Sticking with waffle for now but hashcows may have improved thing recently.
 
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Man I wish Newegg Canada was stocked as well as Newegg USA. Those BTC boards are cheap there in comparison to all of the other places where I can buy them for as much as a mainstream board (usually about $50 over Newegg price). But the problem is that Newegg Canada is always out of stock.
 
vibe said:
Sorry I wasn't clear. That is only a btc asic.

I was comparing it to using our own scrypt rigs vs pure btc asic to make bitcoin.

It takes 80 ghash of btc asic to produce the same as 2.5 mhash of scrypt converted to btc

So a 100ghash btc asic is faster than 2.5mhash of scrypt, if you are going for btc conversion.

This of course is based on 1 mhash = 0.01 btc per day, if conversions get worse, that's a problem.

But btc difficulty is constantly rising too, so 100 ghash may be pointless when that ships.

Look at how wildly different the far right of this graph is:

http://poolpicker.eu/

It is all about long term averages. Sticking with waffle for now but hashcows may have improved thing recently.
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Ah I understand now.

I have also been noticing that Wafflepool has been slipping on their profits. It could also be that some of these pools are dealing with less profitable coins that haven't been added to the exchanges that they deal with via APIs. I mean, I see Wafflepool mining Litecoin now... surely there could be a better coin to mine at this moment that would provide more profits?

I understand that they are also fighting the new coins with KGW implementation or just fast block retargeting. But still, even spreading the love amongst many coins that could be more profitable seems a better idea than just focusing on a single coin that doesn't pay off much at all. I know that Wafflepool claimed they did that already, but it's almost like they did away with that aspect of their profit switching algorithm.

We'll see how long hashcows stays up there... in the near term though, I may be switching to at least Clevermining for my backup profit source.
 
Carbon_Rod said:
AAAAAAAAAND Blackcoin is done mining.

PoS starts now.
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Never really heard of blackcoin, i only branched out to DOGE then stopped

If it's done mining.... that has to be the TRUE test if anyone still cares enough.

The people still computing for the network, what's their incentive, just curious
 
collegeboy69us said:
Never really heard of blackcoin, i only branched out to DOGE then stopped

If it's done mining.... that has to be the TRUE test if anyone still cares enough.

The people still computing for the network, what's their incentive, just curious
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Ya, it is a new coin designed with only 10,000 mined blocks. The rest of the coins generated from now on will be from Proof of Stake. That is, if you leave it in your wallet, your coins make babies (sorta).

You're right, now is the true test of the coin to see if the value will stand up over time.
 
Carbon_Rod said:
Man I wish Newegg Canada was stocked as well as Newegg USA. Those BTC boards are cheap there in comparison to all of the other places where I can buy them for as much as a mainstream board (usually about $50 over Newegg price). But the problem is that Newegg Canada is always out of stock.
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Newegg USA won't ship to Canada? I'll ship you one if that is the case if you pay shipping.

Or would newegg Canada have free shipping or maybe it is a customs problem.
 
collegeboy69us said:
The people still computing for the network, what's their incentive, just curious
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I don't believe running GPUs for the network is necessary. I think that's the whole purpose of PoS. BitCoin and LiteCoin originally had these questions because they are only PoW, not that it matters considering how long they will be on PoW anyway.
 
vibe said:
Newegg USA won't ship to Canada? I'll ship you one if that is the case if you pay shipping.

Or would newegg Canada have free shipping or maybe it is a customs problem.
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No, I can't even check out on Newegg USA. It's only for citizens of the U.S. I tried shopping there ages ago. I was so happy when Newegg Canada opened up.

But, even though Newegg Canada now exists, it's still not the primary place I use for buying. There are a few other large retailers here in Canada, one of which typically has better pricing than Newegg on a number of items and they will even meet Newegg prices when Newegg is lower. I typically only use Newegg for things I absolutely cannot get anywhere else.

I very much appreciate the offer, thank you. But I'm not yet in dire need of the board. I'm supposed to be pacing the spending on my next upgrades and already I'm starting to get way off track. I suppose Newegg Canada not having those boards in stock at the price they have them at is a good thing at this point.
 
I am new to this, so I apologize in advance if this is going to be a stupid question. Since different exchanges have different BTC prices, what is preventing someone to buy them cheaper on one and sell higher on the other? Am I missing something obvious?
 
Meeho said:
I am new to this, so I apologize in advance if this is going to be a stupid question. Since different exchanges have different BTC prices, what is preventing someone to buy them cheaper on one and sell higher on the other? Am I missing something obvious?
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Nope. Not missing a thing, but it's still a timing issue and there are fees to pay every time you buy/sell/transfer, so you have lots of numbers to watch.
 
Meeho said:
I am new to this, so I apologize in advance if this is going to be a stupid question. Since different exchanges have different BTC prices, what is preventing someone to buy them cheaper on one and sell higher on the other? Am I missing something obvious?
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What you've described is called "arbitration" and there's nothing wrong with doing that and yes, there are people that engage in that activity, though it's not as profitable as one may think. Some people have bots set up to do it because I'm guessing the process can be long and monotonous sometimes.

The problem with arbitration is that you need a common baseline currency that you can trade the BTC to and from that you can get between exchanges quickly and easily. You could use USD, but getting USD in and out of certain exchanges is sometimes a lengthy process. Ideally you'd want to do it with another crypto like LTC, but finding one that both exchanges deal with besides BTC could be difficult. Depending on the exchanges you choose to arbitrate between, it will dictate how easy or difficult the process is... many of them have different requirements as to what is required for depositing or withdrawing money. As Core32 pointed out timing could be the key to making or missing out on profit so the more time your funds are tied up in an exchange, the more likely you are to miss out on a profitable trade.

The thing that really eats into profits from arbitration are the exchange fees. When depositing funds it doesn't cost money, but it costs to exchange them from USD to BTC on one exchange, and it will cost a transaction fee to send the BTC off to the other exchange. On the other exchange, it will cost a fee to exchange the BTC back to USD and cost to get your USD out again (sometimes these fees are the highest).

When all is said and done, I've heard that traders that even have bots to do arbitration have been able to show at most a 3% profit over a period of time.
 
Scryptguild has just been killing it lately, I think we have the best coin hopping algo going.
 
jojo69 said:
Scryptguild has just been killing it lately, I think we have the best coin hopping algo going.
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Well, when they cherry pick the high reward blocks for coins that have random block rewards, of course it's going to seem more profitable. Seems a bit too dishonest for me.
 
Here's the breakdown on how MINT and BC contrast, for those who may be interested in these two coins.

Coin Supply
MINT is a high supply coin (over 20 billion entering PoS in 11 days)
BC is a low supply coin (less than 75 million and has entered PoS only)

Coin Interest Rates
MINT has a high interest return, 20% over the first year and then less each progressive year
BC has a low interest return, 1% per year

Coin Stake Period
MINT has a high period, requiring you hold coins 20 days to be eligible for PoS
BC has a low period, requiring you hold coins for only 8 hours to be eligible for PoS

I am very curious to see how both will work with PoS generation. While MINT has a high return, it requires you to not touch your coins for 20 days, which isn't going to work for those who move crypto around on a somewhat regular basis. BC is much more friendly in that regard, but it comes at the cost of interest. I am absolutely taking positions in both. Hopefully the experiments go well and people don't just lose interest in these coins with PoW out of the picture. It's something different to become involved in outside of the mine and dump constantly PoW coin. :p

Meanwhile, I am going to work on getting my own personal DOGE P2Pool setup here for all of my hash.
 
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Got my own DOGE node running. No more pools and shoddy payouts to deal with on that coin. :D
 
It still might be... there's another block reward split coming in about a month and a bit.

Nobody knows for sure, but it might be pumped a bit before the split like last time.
 
if dogecoin is too late right now. what coin is good to mining right now?

is 500 MH/s on maxcoin w/ 2 x 290 (non x)? is too slow?
 
Carbon_Rod said:
Well, when they cherry pick the high reward blocks for coins that have random block rewards, of course it's going to seem more profitable. Seems a bit too dishonest for me.
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wait isn't the point of profit switching pools to maximize profits? So whats going on with scryptguild? I haven't been watching but They've been on my list to test out
 
mkrohn said:
wait isn't the point of profit switching pools to maximize profits? So whats going on with scryptguild? I haven't been watching but They've been on my list to test out
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I know, I understand completely about wanting to maximize profits. It just seems a bit like cheating when I think about it. They're not actually doing anything wrong, but it does pad the stats a bit in their favor.

When a pool is running a coin with a random block reward, the reward for the next block is always able to be determined ahead of time. The reason is because the coin's source is open to the public to scrutinize, the random block value generation function is known. In order to make things fair, the seed for that function also has to be known so that there is no hint of anyone trying to cheat the system. So, the seed is merely a hash of the previous block.

What Scryptguild is doing is determining ahead of time what the block value is for coins like DOGE, and then cherry picking which ones they throw hash power at and which ones to let the rest of the network solve. The result is them appearing to have more profit from the blocks with random block rewards. A side effect of this result would probably be a very erratic network hash rate and probably erratic difficulty for those coins utilizing KGW or fast difficulty retargeting because SG's approach is to pile on the hash power then remove it and work on another coin when the block reward is lower than a certain threshold. Then when the block reward meets their standards, they pile on the hash power again.

On the other hand, if they (and likely others) continue to do this, in the name of fairness fewer and fewer coins will be released with random block rewards which is a change I would certainly welcome. I believe random block rewards are stupid to begin with.

Seems a bit too unfair and a lot like cheating to me, but whatever... I'll get over it.
 
rickyman123 said:
if dogecoin is too late right now. what coin is good to mining right now?

is 500 MH/s on maxcoin w/ 2 x 290 (non x)? is too slow?
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Maxcoin has been dropping in value for weeks since it was last pumped. It is now less than a quarter of its original value. It will still provide you a profit, but that profit is falling daily.

A good coin right now that's "hot" and popular of course (but will probably only remain so for the next couple days because the value is slowly dropping on it as well) is Zeitcoin. If you don't mind hopping coins manually, you can also keep an eye on charts such as Coinwarz and it will tell you what the most profitable coins are right now. The only caveat is that it doesn't list all of the coins available.

Of course, you could pick a profit switching pool and just aim your hash power there if all you're looking for is a few extra BTC. The two top ones right now seem to be Hashcows and Clevermining.
 
kache said:
You're like 3 months too late, not really worth mining doge anymore...
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Not if it goes to ~300 sat or higher next block halving. It's only too late to mine something once it's actually at the top of the mining profitability charts.
 
butterfliesrpretty said:
it still usually sits pretty high up for profitability compared to other coins and unlike many that are being pumped and dumped doge is far more consistent.
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Generally, if an alt can beat mining directly LTC, then it's worth doing it--Doge has been more profitable than mining LTC for a while now. :)
 
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